“You’re so close, you’re rippling against my fingers,” he muttered. “So wet and needy. You’ve been wanting it bad. Beg me for it, girl.”

“Please. Please, I need you inside me.”

“Keep begging. I like your voice. Long as you keep talking, I’ll keep doing the things I’m doing.”

He was a sensual sadist of the first order, and she managed to do as he ordered, begging for his cock, to be taken, to be fucked hard, even as her voice faltered beneath his clever fingers and tongue, her breath laboring, body trembling so hard she felt close to seizing. “Derek.”

He picked her up, but instead of bringing her to the saddle as he’d threatened, he took her to the ladder that led up to the hayloft. He’d retrieved the rope as well, so now he used it to pull her hands over her head, binding her to an upper rung. It put a strain on her shoulders, until he lifted her knees and placed them a few rungs below. She felt a jerk as the ankle rope was released, but then there was the click of a blade as he deftly split the rough twine and retied her just above the knees, binding her legs to the insides of the ladder step, spreading her in that narrow space. So quick and easy, all smooth motions, his skill with the knife and rope enough to make her stomach jump with butterflies of apprehension and lust at once.

Her breasts were on the platform of a step and now her eyes widened as he came around with another length of rope. He positioned the rope horizontally over them, looped it around her back, then brought the ends under the step, tying the knot beneath. He’d made it snug so the rope constricted over her breasts, holding them there. Then he did another wrap so there was a taut line positioned just in front of her nipples, the twine pricking and teasing the tips.

“Derek.” All she could do was repeat his name now. Her sex was contracting, impossibly aroused. She was helpless, panting. Stepping back, he hooked a thumb in his pocket and studied her with approval, her body naked but for the corset, pulled below her breasts. But his chest was rising and falling like a man who’d been running, his cock a bar of steel against straining denim. Every muscle was delineated in his beautiful body like priceless erotic art of the male form. All of it told her he was far from affected.

“You’re not begging, Ruby.” He glanced left, and when she followed his gaze, her heart thumped into her throat. He was studying a barrel of assorted cattle brands, and next to them was a lit brazier.

She’d conjured it, so she couldn’t deny the primal, crazy desire. Whether or not she’d ever have the bravery to acknowledge or do it in real life, the idea of him marking her as his in some permanent way in this fantasy was overwhelming, tripping up her tongue and silencing any protest she might have.

“I want to put my brand on you. Doesn’t much matter how wrong that is; it is what it is.” He brought his face to hers, his hands closing over her tied wrists. His chest pressed against her distended breasts, and the sensitized tips screamed in a mixture of pleasure and pain at the stimulation of his body pushing the rope into them. It made her quiver harder against the ladder, made the wood rattle. “You tell me, Ruby. Tell me who you belong to, no matter how much you try to deny it.”

“You,” she said. Her voice choked with the emotion of it. “You know it’s always been you. It always will be you. Please, Derek. Be inside me. I’ve needed you for so long. I’ve died a hundred times of loneliness and pain. I need you.”

“I’ve always been here, damn you.” She saw emotion in his face now, the same pain of loss, of betrayal. “Ah, hell. It’s a fantasy, right?”

He moved away, two steps, and lifted the brand from the fire, brought it back. Shifting behind her, he closed his hand on her shoulder, at the juncture of her throat. His thumb swept the tender section of skin on the inside of her shoulder blade, telling her where he intended to put it. “Say it, Ruby,” he said harshly. “Say it again, and keep saying it until I tell you to stop.”

“Yours. I’m yours. Yours.” She screamed it as the brand pressed to her flesh. It was less than a blink of time, but the pain seared through her instantly, white-hot, incredible. She embraced the agony, the purging. When he threw the hot iron aside, so violently it hit the wall with a clang, she began to beg again. He opened his jeans, and her eyes closed as he fit his sizeable organ at the wet entrance that welcomed him. Putting his hand on her opposite shoulder, that same juncture, he tightened his fingers on her throat. His mouth was close to her ear.

“You’re mine, Ruby. I don’t care how far you run, or how you try to push me away. I’ve lived for centuries. I’m never giving up on you.”

He pushed inexorably into the narrow opening provided by the spread of her legs. It had been over a month since her last time with Mikhael, so she was tight. The tissues, though soaking wet, weren’t used to loosening for a man’s penetration. Derek gave them no choice, demanding entry.

She took him in with a deep groan, and when he was in to the hilt, his hands came around, captured her breasts. That rope constriction made her shriek from the stimulus.

“Has there been anyone else? Anyone else been inside you like this?”

“Not like you. Not the places you can take me.”

He set his teeth to her throat then. “But there has been someone.”

She swallowed, not sure how to respond. It was something so different from Derek, and it was about the pain, about not letting the hunger become a monster that could consume her. She didn’t want the fantasy to take this turn, so she didn’t answer.

He deepened his penetration, making her whimper as he bumped her cervix, an intentional discomfort. “That won’t happen again. Ever. Say it.”

“Only you.” She could say it, because though she knew it would have to happen again, here in her fantasy she could pretend that Derek would be with her, that he was as much hers as she was his, and nothing else mattered.

“Little liar.” Withdrawing and pushing back in, he made her whimper again. Then he started to torment her in earnest, thrusting slow and fast, teasing her by pulling out to rub against her clit, then going back in again, sometimes pulling out only to fondle her breasts while he stroked his cock up the channel between her buttocks. Her sex wept in need for him.

He was a big man all over, such that the wood of the ladder protested. Her body might be fragile in comparison, but her need gave her the strength to meet him on every stroke. She took the punishment, the rough contact of his chest hair against that brand, the stretch of his cock inside of her, the pinching of her nipples.

She’d taken punishment from Mikhael to get a climax, but Derek brought true fulfillment with his demands. He wouldn’t let her get away with anything less than complete surrender. So it was that the tears were streaming down her face, her heart giving in with her body when he pulled out again, holding the climax just out of reach.

“Say it again, girl, and you damn well better mean it this time. You won’t ever lie to me again.”

“Only you. I’ll never…. let another man touch me again…. but you. Please, I can’t bear it. I’m yours. I belong to you.”

“Damn right you do.” He slid back in, and now he pushed her hair out of the way, nuzzling her throat, his fingers closing back over her breasts as he brought himself flush against her, thigh to thigh, his pelvis in tight against her backside, chest against her shoulder blades, the abrasion of that brand between them. He pinched her nipples and made a subtle, incremental adjustment, slid back in. Tiny, tiny movements of his cock inside her, rubbing in all the right places. He had her pushed full against the ladder steps, and, true to a fantasy, one of those steps was right against her clit, so that minute friction, within and without, the ruthless manipulation of her nipples, took her over. Everything else began to disappear.

“Derek….” It was a desperate wail.

“Come for me. And don’t hold anything back.”

The climax crashed over her. She screamed herself hoarse, unable to stop when wave after wave swept through her. Then he took her up impossibly higher by beginning to pump hard and fast, releasing within her. Her fingers dug into the rope above her, head dropping back against his shoulder. She turned to snap at his throat, held on as he kept pummeling her against that ladder.

It went on a long, long time. Bliss, ecstasy, the best parts of Heaven and Hell. Long after she was rippling in aftershocks along his length, he kept going, apparently wanting to underscore the lesson, the binding between them. She took it, her chest near exploding with feeling.

Hearing his erratic breath as he at last came down, she wondered if he was choked by some of the same emotions she was. Then, like a cold-water shock, she remembered it was her fantasy. That lantern was still burning strong. Whatever he was experiencing, it was what she wanted him to be feeling. Her sense of loss was so great, she’d needed to share it.

Raina had herself a winner here, though it was a double-edged sword. A military spouse could share emotional and physical release with an absent husband or wife. But it might be too adept at what it did. Too painful for it to seem this real, when it really wasn’t. She needed to warn Raina about that, since Raina wasn’t as in tune with the emotional ramifications of sex as the physical ones.

However, as far as the physical part of it went, if it got much better than this, Raina would need to post warnings like they did for roller-coaster rides— no back problems, heart conditions, risk of seizure or stroke, etcetera.

Derek was placing long, lingering kisses on her throat, her shoulders, stroking his fingers through her hair as he did it. Then he dropped his touch to slide along her sides, relearning her shape, obviously enjoying the corset’s hold and indulging himself as she remained tied. “I want to do this to you all night long,” he said, making it sound like the enticing threat it was. “In a hundred different ways. I want you to be so sore that the last time I do it, I’ll need to ease into you. I’ll go so slow, so I don’t hurt you. You’ll take me despite all that, because that’s the way it is between us.”